Lately I’ve started disabling the Java plugin in Chrome (my main browser) on my own computers to avoid infection and I just came across someone else who had the same idea: http://superuser.com/questions/201613/disable-java-plugin-in-google-chrome

Jeff Atwood, renowned author of Coding Horror started a discussion on superuser.com regarding his experiences with drive-by-installs delivered via Java browser plugins and suggests that users should go as far as to remove Java unless you know you have to use it.

My advice to anyone looking to avoid drive-by-installs (which should be everyone) is to disable Java browser plugins (if only temporarily) to protect yourself while you browse the web. Not to mention you should update your JRE installation and remove old, exploitable versions and their browser plugins.

Dear Mockingbird customers,

Mockingbird’s taking flight

We’re excited to announce that Mockingbird will launch on August 15, 2010 — with multi-user collaboration!

Details on the paid plans:

	Active Projects	Users	Price/month
Personal	2	Unlimited	$9
Team	10	Unlimited	$20
Pro	25	Unlimited	$40
Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	$85

There will also be a free account available that allows 1 project with 3 pages.

You can archive finished projects, which won’t count toward your active project limit. You won’t be charged for months during which you have no projects active.

What you need to do

Projects made with beta accounts will be automatically archived and will not be accessible after August 15, 2010. Customers who choose to upgrade to a paid plan may re-activate beta projects, but free accounts will not be able to access old beta projects, so please make sure to log into your Mockingbird account to export PNG or PDF versions of any projects you need.

Beta discount

Your feedback has made Mockingbird better, and we’d like to thank you by offering a coupon for 25% off the first three months of any paid plan. Keep your eye out on your inbox for the coupon code when Mockingbird launches.

Questions or comments?

If you’ve got questions about the transition out of beta or want to get in touch with us for any other reason, we’d love to hear from you. Email us at contact@gomockingbird.com.

Thanks for all your support, and we look forward to continuing to help you make great wireframes.
- The Mockingbird Team

In a nut shell they are saying thanks for testing, all projects are now archived so export them. If you want your old projects back, pay us. Wow.. Awesome. Thanks!

I jumped on Twitter, first off I never use Twitter but I figured it might be worth a try.

Wow. Didn’t expect that.

I guess I just have to tweet a complaint to get my projects extended, so everyone else that is in the same boat as me has to ask? What’s the harm in letting your free beta testers to keep their current projects? Oh… right.. Mockingbird doesn’t want casual users that could see the benefits of a quick HTML5 mockup tool so they won’t eventually become paid users and tell friends and colleagues alike how great of an application it is.

My project is exported.. who knows what they will do in the future but don’t consider your projects safe with this startup.

namebench DNS Benchmark Results

Like me, you’ve probably read all sorts of great things about the public DNS service OpenDNS, but one thing you should find out for yourself is how it will impact the speed of your web browsing.

After using OpenDNS name servers for months at work I started to notice that page load times at home (on a much slower connection) were considerably more “snappy” with my ISP provided DNS servers. A quick Google brought up the comprehensive Open Source namebench DNS benchmark tool.

A run of namebench resulted in a pretty html file with numbers and graphs that confirmed my suspicions. My ISP’s (Comcast) DNS servers were 174.4% faster than OpenDNS on average, with Google’s Public DNS coming in a close second place.

It should be noted that namebench is rather smart and it rifles through your browser history in order to compile a personalized set of domains for its testing, so my results are potentially unique – and this is just one test (actually I did three, I also used Alexa top domains for a source to avoid DNS caching – and the results were all similar), at one location. Although once I switched to my ISP’s DNS servers I experienced a noticeable difference in page load times.  Not to mention that my results may change in the future due to server load, poor caching, etc. But with OpenDNS, there was always a slight wait before a page would even start to load, and now that wait is gone. And that’s on a 36Mbps downstream connection.

My points are simple:

1. Switching to OpenDNS (or any other DNS service) may be a bad thing.
2. Your DNS server does matter.
3. namebench is awesome.

It may be a matter of milliseconds but it all adds up, many large websites require dozens of DNS queries for ads, images, scripts and more. Do your own testing before believing the hype.

Regardless, OpenDNS is still a great service: if I ever have the need for a basic content filtering system I will turn to OpenDNS.

Download namebench (for Windows, Mac, or Linux/Unix) and see for yourself how your current DNS stacks up.

• C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\sp3.cab: Trojan.Rootkit-1835 FOUND
• C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\atapi.sys: Trojan.Rootkit-1835 FOUND
• C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\atapi.sys: Trojan.Rootkit-1835 FOUND
• C:\WINDOWS\system32\ReinstallBackups\0001\DriverFiles\i386\atapi.sys: Trojan.Rootkit-1835 FOUND

This was interesting because lately I’ve been cleaning up computers that end up missing atapi.sys and need it replaced in order to boot without a BSOD. But upon looking into it and finding a note in a recent ClamAV database update I am confident that this was a false positive.

It appears that this happened back in 2005 as well but was taken care of and now it’s happened again. I went as far as to grab an SP3 XP Pro install disc and scan it with ClamWin and it found the same false positive Trojan.Rootkit-1835.

Luckily the false postive has been removed from the ClamAV database as of 15 Dec 2009 04-20 -0500 according to this daily.csv submission note:

ClamAV database updated (15 Dec 2009 04-20 -0500): daily.cvd
Version: 10173
...
Submission notes: Trojan.Rootkit-1835 dropped due to false positive

So just update your ClamWin Database and no more false positives. You may want to run the System File Checker before you reboot just in case ClamWin deleted your atapi.sys, otherwise you’ll probably get a Blue Screen Of Death.

Just run the following commands and insert the install CD when it asks for it:

sfc /purgecache
sfc /scannow

Sources:

http://lists.clamav.net/lurker/attach/1@20091215.092101.11505bd1.attach

http://forums.clamwin.com/viewtopic.php?p=11247

But, in a fresh Arch Linux install you still need a few gstreamer packages to enable totem-video-thumbnailer to do its job…

1. Install necessary packages (as root):

pacman -Sy --needed totem gstreamer0.10-{{bad,good,ugly,base}{,-plugins},ffmpeg}

2. Delete old video thumbnails to force generation of new ones:

rm -rf ~/.thumbnails/fail

3. Browse a folder of video files in Nautilus:

In some cases you may need to restart Nautlius for the changes to take effect:

killall nautilus

…or simply log out and log in again.

System Info

• Arch Linux – Kernel 2.6.31-ARCH
• Gnome 2.28.0
• packages gnome & gnome-extra

Source

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Common_codecs

Versions

• Starter is weak (for netbooks) 32-bit only, OEM pre-install only
• Home Basic is for emerging markets (we probably won’t see it in the US much)
• Home Premium is what most consumers will end up with
• Professional is the lowest version to include features such as Remote Desktop Serving, Domain Joining, and Windows XP Mode
• Enterprise is the same as Ultimate but with volume licensing and they both include BitLocker
• Ultimate has all possible features (of course)

Wikipedia detailed Windows 7 Version Comparison Chart

General

• Supposedly 7 can be installed from a USB drive (without hacking).
• Internet Explorer 8 can pretty much be removed – many parts are integrated into the OS, but the browser can go bye-bye.
• The sidebar is gone but Gadgets remain, and are more efficient and movable.
• There is an overly hyped new taskbar.

• Session: Jason Grigsby – Speed Up WordPress. Make Readers Happy and Your Site Green
  1. Setting expires headers really does matter in the battle for page loading speed/efficiency.
  2. SpriteMe makes CSS sprite implementation so easy there’s little excuse not to try it.
  3. There’s a promising SQL query stats plugin for WP available:  SQL Monitor
• Session: Woopra intro w/ Lorelle VanFossen (who is very friendly!)
  1. Woopra provides real time analytics via a cross-platform desktop app.
  2. Woopra is free while in beta but will continue supporting most existing accounts when they go full release and start charging for the service.
  3. Woopra utilizes javascript embedded in the site in order to track (line Google Analytics).
  4. Woopra’s real time capabilities provide insight into the results of social networking + marketing campaigns.
  5. Woopra’s interface is snazzy!
• Session: Matt Mullenweg – WordPress Q&A
  1. Matt is a funny guy in person too!
• Session: Unconference discussion of the WordPress Codex (I suggested this topic)
  1. The Codex’s short comings are well known and being addressed!
  2. A new “handbook” documentation system is in the works and volunteer help is needed.
  3. The plan is to approach many help topics from multiple points of view such as Theme Designer, Core Developer, Plugin Developer, etc. as well as having “lessons” for particular tasks.
  4. The new docs will be standardized, version controlled, community driven, and overseen by the WP team.
  5. We can contribute to the current Codex (it’s MediaWiki driven) and our good stuff won’t be lost in the change over.
  6. A jobs board for WordPress.org is in the works – community cred will be associated with contractors offering their services.
  7. There is a passionate accessible open source community behind WordPress! It may be hard to find but it’s definitely there, and they need volunteer help from anyone involved in WordPress – even if you’re brand spanking new, they need your perspective! Some resources for contributing to WordPress:
     • List of mailing lists to join: http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo
     • WordPress.org Forums (of course): http://wordpress.org/support/
     • Codex article series on contributing: http://codex.wordpress.org/Contributing_to_WordPress
     • #wordpress-dev IRC channel at irc.freenode.net (not sure on regular meeting dates/times)

On another note, there was an interesting mix of MacBooks and NetBooks at the con and from what I was seeing the WiFi was a little flaky (had some issues getting an IP).

If you would like to talk to me at the conference Sunday I will be wearing the below pictured yellow Kool-Aid Man Web 2.OH YEAAH!! t-shirt from Mule Design. I may appear to be derisive or zombie-like but I assure you it’s because I am trying to kick the energy beverage habit and suffering the side effects.

If you can’t read my badge on Sunday, my name is Sam.

Why might you want to talk to me?

1. You enjoy my dry sarcasm.
2. You have something to say about the WP plugin I wrote: TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker)
3. You are curious why I only mentioned the above topics and not others.
4. You take pity on me and want to inflate my ego.
5. You want to meet a real live person you found on the web (even though I may lack celebrity).
6. You enjoy the non-WordPress related content on this site and want to give me a high-five.
7. You think I am a blundering idiot and don’t deserve to live (kindly warn me before you open fire).
8. You really like the below t-shirt and want your picture taken with me. (I’m pretty good looking as well).
9. You are having technical difficulties with you computer; Mac, Windows, or Linux and would like my help (I spend my daylight hours as a support technician).

So, its 4:00 AM and I’m in the lab finishing up my Ghost disk-to-disk imaging on the remaining machines…

Total time to break remaining boxes and yank HDs + Ghost imaging time = 30 mins.

Time wasted to get to this point = 3 hours.

If anyone can prove me wrong concerning the shortcomings of Clonezilla, please do (and comment, duh).

http://www.google.com/reader/m/ or from a mobile browser just: http://www.google.com/reader/